If you know what texting is, skip this paragraph. For the rest of you, it's short for text-messaging, where a person types messages onto his or her cell phone keypad and receives messages on the cell screen. Generally, typing is all thumbs.

Until this summer, college basketball coaches were allowed to text-message recruits anytime, all the time. I'm not sure why, exactly. The NCAA has strict limits on phone calls to recruits. Texting is done on a phone, and charges for texting are assessed on your cell phone bill. So logic would follow that text messages are, in fact, phone calls.

But the NCAA rarely has been big on logic. Thus, unlimited texting was legal — until the NCAA Board of Directors, acting on a recommendation from the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, banned the practice.

How this ultimately winds up is anyone's guess. Probably, the ban will be eased, but with restrictions imposed on when and how frequently and under what conditions a coach is allowed to text a recruit.

I've been a gung ho backer of the text ban. I viewed the NCAA's previous open-texting policy as one huge loophole for coaches to circumvent rules. One example: Text a kid and ask him to call you. Also, texting isn't free, as I have learned being the father of kids in high school and college. You open a text message, you pay. I could see recruits all over the country, their cell phones buzzing non-stop with text alerts, their parents going bankrupt paying the bills.

But Bradley coach Jim Les, an avid and fluent texter, said something the other day that gave me pause.

'You can build a relationship with a kid, text-messaging,' Les said.

Really.

I'm a personal contact kind of guy. I'll get up from my desk and walk up or down stairs, to the far reaches of our office building, to talk with someone face to face, rather than dial their extension on my desk phone. If that's not possible, I prefer a phone conversation to e-mail. And so on.

I just don't get thumbing 'How RU' and the send button. I sure can't imagine thumbing deep thoughts.

But my kids do.

'I know you get braver when you don't see the reaction on the other person's face,' Les said. 'They'll text things to you that they'll never tell you over the phone. On the phone, they tell you what you want to hear.'

Les says that before the ban, he carried on text conversations with prospects about all kinds of things, from simple what's-up chat to dispensing advice on shooting techniques and drills.

'You develop a little bond, and then it becomes a relationship,' the coach says. 'It's been a great way for us to get to know a young man, and it also allowed us to outwork some people, to develop a relationship with some kids who were being recruited by big-name schools.'

Not everybody prefers texting, though.

'I'd rather be called,' says Will Egolf, a 6-9 Bradley freshman from Juneau, Alaska. 'I looked forward to the days when coaches were allowed to call and we could talk.'

Egolf provides a couple of examples as to why the NCAA restricts phone calls — and why it cracked down on texting. For one thing, some coaches would text him when he was in class. 'That was terrible,' he says. Another problem was the cost, especially living in Alaska.

'Even in July before my senior year, when I was in California with my travel team, I was getting calls and texts,' he said. 'But it was on my Alaska number. My phone bill was huge from talking to coaches.'

That didn't bother Rashad Austin, a 6-7 Californian who comes to Bradley as a junior college transfer from Colorado. He purchased a cell phone plan that included free texting.

None of the players I talked to likes the text ban, though some would like to see limits. Les obviously doesn't like the ban, either, but understands why it was imposed. He's hopeful an acceptable compromise can be worked out, one that protects recruits from 24/7 message assault but allows regular communication.

'Allow us to text them on weekends, or after 7 o'clock on weeknights,' Les says. 'Or say, if the young man texts you, you're allowed to text him back. If you text him and you get no response, well, that tells you something right there. But if he does respond, texting is a great way to develop communication lines and build that relationship.'

KIRK WESSLER is executive sports editor/columnist with the Journal Star. Contact him at kwessler@pjstar.com, or (309) 686-3216.

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